Following Fake Fred for an Hour

            “He didn’t seem like himself at all,” Jesse said, grimacing, “it’s kinduv scary.”

            “I know, it’s really weird. It makes you think, what could’ve happened?”

            “I know, seriously. He didn’t smile like the whole time he was here.”

            “Yeah, God, that sucks. Do you know who we was texting?”

            “I don’t know probably Wren. He’s like obsessed with her.”

            “Yeah...”

            They sat in silence for an uncomfortable minute, reflecting, wracking their brains for some explanation as to behavior they just couldn’t comprehend.

            The crazy vibrations of an insistent cell phone upended their trains of thought; Jesse scrounged around in the couch and Fred looked on patiently.

            “Ey what’s up? I’m just in my basement with Fred; you can come here if you want. Yeah no he was; he just left. Yeah we hadn’t either, what are you doing? Uh, gimme a call first; I want t’ leave here pretty soon. Yeah peace, love ya, okay.”

            “Who was that?”

            “Mitch, he say’s he’s gonna buy and then he wants to meet up.”

            “Oh shit, I want to buy” Fred said, sing-song, stretching “buy” into two syllables. “I’m gonna call’m ‘n’ see if I can buy with him.” He extracted his phone from his coat pocket, punched three buttons and brought it to his ear. His eyes drifted from one corner of his vision to another, then he snapped-to, as if he’d forgotten that he was making a call.

            “Hey Mitch, are you buying? Oh sweet dude, can I go with you, I’ve got like thirty bucks. Yeah is that cool? Okay sweet man see ya then. No no I don’t have my car. Okay cool. Peace.”

            Fred looked at Jesse. “He’s coming here to pick me up, but I’ll call you after and we can sm-ohh-ke.”

            “Oh can I come? ...For the ride.” Jesse spoke the last three words like he was hesitant to admit it was a legitimate wish.

            “Yeah duh, of course.”

            “Okay sweet; I wanna leave anyway. You know when he’s gonna be here?”

            “Uh I think pretty soon; I know he’s just at his house...”

            “Oh okay, ‘cause I was gonna say we could smoke a joint before he gets here...”

            “Yeah I mean, I’d be down...uh I don’t have any weed, yet,” Fred said somewhat nervously, stepping lightly around his friend’s possession.

            “No it’s cool I got it, ‘s’long as you smoke me up later right?”

            “Oh yeah, definitely. We gon’ be smokin’ all night niggeh,”—a half-assed street-accent that neither Jesse nor Fred thought was funny.

            “Okay sweet.” Jesse stood up and brushed nothing off his coat, “Uh, let’s go to my porch,” he said thoughtfully, “I’m-a roll a joint.”

            Fred followed Jesse down the hallway, through the kitchen and to the back door. Jesse reached for the doorknob then paused and cocked his head to the side. He turned, patted-down his waist, his thighs and his chest, with the tip of his tongue curled over his upper lip.

            “Do you have a lighter?” He said.

            “Oh no sorry I don’t,” Fred responded, with the obligatory-midsection-feel.

            “A’ight lemme grab one.” Jesse walked through the kitchen and disappeared in search of a lighter. Fred stood glancing from the cupboards to the sink to the wall-hangings, and then walked to the refrigerator.

            He looked at a photograph held to the fridge by a magnetic banana. It was a young-Jesse wearing a party hat, a short-sleeved button-down shirt with colorful cars and busses on it, and small khaki-shorts. He was sitting cross-legged, grinning from ear-to-ear, holding a “Doc-Oc” action figure proudly for the photographer to see. Fred folded his arms and leaned to the right. He smiled that special smile that comes over a face in reaction to sights so cute, so beautiful and innocent they’re vaguely depressing.

            Present-day Jesse came through the doorway and stood beside Fred; looked at the photo. “I know, isn’t that picture awesome?”

            “Yeah, you look so happy.”

            “Yeah dude I musta been so wasted.”

            Fred didn’t take his eyes off the picture. “Yeah, I bet.”

            They sat opposite each other on a well-lit screened-in porch. Jesse worked out of a plastic baggie onto a white-wicker table and Fred stared at his cell phone.

            “Who are ya texting?”

            “Johanna.”

            “Oh yeah, how’s that going?”

            “Ah I don’t know, I don’t really...it’s not going anywhere.”

            “Oh? Why?”

            “I don’t know man, it’s...I’m just really not into her, I realized. I wanted to be, but, I don’t know...”

            “Int’resting.”

            “Yeah...how ‘bout you, got any, uh, prospects?”

            “Nah...I been tryin’ t’ get with Lizzie but she’s just been a bitch lately.” He wetted the joint-in-progress with his tongue.

            “Ah.”

            The small-talk left them somber and they just sat intent on their respective pursuits. Fred closed his phone and then closed his eyes. “Any idea whatcher doin’ later?” he said with little real-interest. Jesse shrugged his shoulders and raised the left side of his mouth painfully, “But I think this is ready.” He held the joint pinched between his thumb and index finger, turned it slowly, appraising his child.

            “Sweet. Thanks, by the way.”

            “Oh no, yeah of course I gotchu.”

            “Yeah, thanks man, you’ve just smoked me up so much over break,” somewhat sheepishly.

            Jesse continued to eye his work; he was a connoisseur of all things smoke-able. “Spread love it’s the Brooklyn way...that’s what Biggie said...four shots in the dark...now Jesse’s dead,” he trailed off absentmindedly. Finally, he put the joint between his lips, tossed his head back for effect and struck the end. He puffed, he dragged, he took the joint from his mouth and inhaled deeply, audibly. “’s’good,” he grunted from the back of his throat as he passed to Fred.

           

            “Are you high?” Jesse asked. Fred smiled and shook his head slowly and downward, “Yeah.” “Good, me too,” Jesse said, and he was, “have you heard from Mitch, do you know when he’s coming?”

            “Uh...no, do you think I should call’m? Here I’m gonna call’m.” He punched three buttons and held his phone with his mouth hanging open. “How long has it been...” he strained his forehead in thought. “Oh hey Mitch, what’s up? Oh are you uh, coming? Oh yeah no it’s cool, that’s cool. Okay sweet then, I’ll see ya. Yep bye.” He looked at his phone. “Yeah, he’s coming.”

            “When? Right now?” Jesse asked, desiring something more specific.

            “Yeah he said like ten minutes.”

            “Cool...what are we gonna do tonight? God damn it it’s already dark outside, can you believe that? What the fuck?”

            “Yeah that’s crazy.” Fred stared into the dark.

            “God, there’s gotta be a place to go, ya know?”

            “Yeah, but there isn’t.”

            Jesse sighed. “Fuck.” He stared at the wicker table. He leaned forward, snatched the lighter, stood up and pocketed it. “I’m gonna grab my iPod before Mitch gets here.”

            “A’ight.” Fred looked at the air above his right knee, head throbbing with bad-thoughts. He slumped lower in his chair, rested his right hand in his crotch and ran his left through his static brown hair. He did not change positions until his phone rang.

            “Ey, are you here? A’ight we’ll be there in a second.” He stood up, looked at the seat behind him, felt around his pockets and then realized his phone was in his hand. He walked to the back door of the house and opened it. Jesse was watching Spongebob Squarepants on a small television in the kitchen and eating tortilla chips.

            “Hey Mitch’s here.”

            “A’ight sweet” Jesse said with his mouth full. He turned off the TV and swiped his black iPod from the counter, walked out of the room and then came back again and toward the door. Fred stepped outside with Jesse right behind him, hunched his shoulders toward his ears and sucked in cold air. 

             “Dibs on shotgun” Jesse said. Fred didn’t respond. They walked around the side of the house and made for their predetermined car seats.

            Mitch was drumming the steering wheel with his thumbs. “’T’s’up guys?” he said as Fred and Jesse entered, “Fred, you look really high.”

            Fred feigned a smile and then dropped it, nervously, “Yeah yeah, uh, yeah I am.”

            “We just smoked a joint. It was such a good joint.” Jesse said.

            “Oh, nice. I’ve been high all day,” Mitch said, plugging in his iPod and backing out of the driveway.

            “Nice man...let’s get some more weed, then.” Jesse said playfully.

            Fred looked up suddenly. “Wait, I just realized I’m buying and you got shotgun.”

            “So?”

            “So I don’t know, isn’t there some kinduv hierarchy or rule or something? I mean I really don’t care, I just thought, I don’t know usually there is.”

            Mitch and Jesse looked straight ahead. “So besides that joint what did y—oh shit, you guys hung out with Charlie didn’t you?”

            “Yeah...”

            “How was that?”

            Fred and Jesse looked at each other wearily and then Jesse spoke, “Eh...it was pretty bad. It was just so awkward; we didn’t really ask him about it or anything...I don’t know it wasn’t—”

            “It was like the most uncomfortable experience of my life” Fred interrupted.

            “That sucks. Besides the party I haven’t seen’m since he got home. What did you guys do?”

            “Uh, we didn’t really do anything...he was texting Wren a bunch which sucked; he just looked like he was somewhere else. I don’t know why he likes her, she’s a total bitch...she is really hot, though. Uh, I don’t know, we watched Spongebob for a while.” Jesse drudged up anything he could remember while Fred browsed Mitch’s iPod and selected an old Neil Young song.

            “Oh yeah, there was a marathon on today, I saw that. The magic conch episode was on too, that’s like the best episode.” Mitch said excitedly.

            “Yeah that episode’s so g—”

            “It’s gonna be weird hanging out with Charlie,” Fred said, “we can’t talk about weed or alcohol or anything, you know. And you guys realize that’s all we do.”

           

            They rode in stoned-quiet. “Don’t let it bring you down, it’s only castles burning, find someone who’s turning, and you will come around.”

            “Well, does anybody wanna smoke?”

           

           

Poem for Lindsey Taylor

            I want this, the worst piece I’ll ever post, to reach a wider readership.

            I was chain-smoking cigarettes. I had just quit my job as a night-stocker at Hy-Vee. I had just seen Nick Young running with the University cross country team. It was 7 in the morning.

            My car was parked on the street. I did not want my roommate to know I’d quit, not yet. I walked to my car, got in. Started it. Drove.

            It was my high school coach’s birthday. “Happy Birthday, Coach,” I texted him. I drove. I drove to the pornographic bookstore on Kirkwood Blvd.

            I’d never been there, just driven past. I’d never been to a place like that.

            There were two people behind the counter: a portly twenty-something girl and a thin, sleazy-looking gent. The man asked to see my I.D. and I showed him. Then he asked what I was looking for.

            “Uh, I don’t know, I’m just browsing.”

            “Nope, you can’t be here.”

            What? “Uh no, I mean, I’m not going to masturbate in here or anything,” I said, “I’ve just never been to a, uh, a place like this.”

            I looked at the magazines. The magazines were expensive. I looked at the DVDs. Holy shit the DVDs were expensive. I looked at the magazines.

            I deliberated for some time. A man, about 5 foot 3 with a fat face, a gut and no hair walked in through the side door. The man at the counter greeted him by name—a regular. The short man walked straight to the back of the store, behind a black curtain, below a sign, “for previews.”

            I looked at a magazine called “Butt Man.” The title was advertised in juicy bubble letters. BUTT MAN. And on the cover, of course, a pornographic model with a huge ass.

             “I don’t know, I’m just really excited about this idea, I just want to write something...post it to my Blog, something that’s truthful, personal...but just borderline over-the-top. Something really sexual, you know, true...but disgusting. Something that maybe the Lindsey Taylors will see and say, ‘What the fuck, what a creep.’”

            “I want complete freedom in everything I write and say.”

            I held Butt Man in my right hand and a Playboy in my left. The Playboy featured some posthumous Vonnegut. I thought that was too-funny.

            I bought the Vonnegut Playboy and a Penthouse with an article called “Salvia-The Legal LSD.” I said to the counter-people, “Have you ever read ‘Breakfast of Champions’?” They hadn’t, why? “Oh, I don’t know...I just think it’s funny to find Vonnegut here.”

            I left, drove near my apartment, parked on the street and sat there with my new reading. I read the Vonnegut story, didn’t like it very much, read the salvia article, didn’t like it very much. Then I looked at the pictures.

            You wouldn’t believe the compromising positions they put those young women in! I cringed at the blurbs and quotes, studied the pictures, the bodies...tried to get worked-up, but I couldn’t. I should have opted for Butt Man.

            “Jeez...that’s terrible” I exhaled. I drove two blocks to my apartment lot, discarded the magazines in the dumpster, and went inside to catch some sleep.

            I am a self-deprecating masturbator. I lie angled on my bed and look back and forth, back and forth, from the blonde supermodel with superhuman sexual features to my average white dick. I speak for both of them:

            “Faster—no, bigger, just get bigger! Fuck, I’m bored by this.” And my average white dick looks around at the hills and valleys of cream and caramel and pink plumage and says “Jesus fuck oh my fuck” with a stupid look on his face, disbelieving, “you are the sexiest thing in the world, versed in techniques and secrets, given to love and sex and fortune...and I am down so low.”

            And that’s enough talk out of him to illicit ejaculation, everywhere. I maneuver my weight awkwardly until I’m standing with my pants at my ankles, my body all but immobilized, thick semen matted in my pubic hair, dick going soft, searching desperately for Kleenex or loose paper or socks or my high school diploma...

            I rung in 2007 alone in a Walgreen’s. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. My friends had made new friends—popular, well-adjusted friends—or found girlfriends—popular, physically attractive girlfriends. I hadn’t.

            I have a self-destructive tendency to seek solitude when I’m down, and it just makes my condition worse, low-low-low. So I struck out in the cold and walked to that Walgreen’s.

            I had short hair. I was six feet tall, 130 pounds—real skinny. I was wearing a dirty gray jacket that I wore in and outside of class, size 30-36 eBay jeans, penny loafers and plastic, half-turtle-shell-half-deep-blue Dolce & Gabbana glasses. I had tried to black-out the “D&G” logo; I found it embarrassing for some reason. I wasn’t doing well.

            The cashier eyed me suspiciously—or maybe I projected that unto her. In retrospect she probably thought I was looking to steal alcohol, but alcohol wasn’t on my mind yet, and that’s a good thing.

            I stole condoms. I didn’t take them out of the store. I took them to the bathroom, locked the door, sat in the stall and unwrapped one. I jogged my dick alive with thoughts of girls who hated me, got an erection. I rolled the condom on, struggling to stay hard. I’d never put on a condom, and why would I have? Sex was a far-away dream blown all out of proportion.

            I thrust, I slapped my dick against my stomach, I thrust. I did not come; I had never come. WHY CAN’T I COME?

            (Why couldn’t I come? Because my uncircumcised dick was rusted over with scar tissue, so I couldn’t retract my foreskin, so I couldn’t stimulate my glans. A simple snip-snip from Dr. Wahle and 15 dick-stitches were well worth the ability to climax and propagate my genes; my lousy-dick genes.)

            I left the stall, looked at myself in the smudgy ill-lit mirror, and hated myself then. Why can’t you come...but more importantly, WHY ARE YOU HERE? Eleven-something P.M., December 31^st, 2006. Where is everyone else? At a house, with friends, celebrating, enjoying themselves...and what are you doing?

            Well, not ejaculating...

           

            I’m trying and not trying to grow older and younger—not thinner, hopefully, stronger—more me and less them; me, myself, I’ll keep you. Dressing and undressing, I keep sleeping and not sleeping, dreaming…maybe there is one word I just haven’t learned, one word that’ll help. Words are like shadows, make people like shadows, and feelings are hard stone. Can you feel my words? No, no, I didn’t think so. The most eloquent euphony still is not Love. I would cut out my heart or unhinge my scalp if that’d accomplish something.

            I can’t try very hard. Should I use ephemeral...“the white-black-electric buzz in my eye-lids; the ephemeral phosphene glow...You’re beautiful, and I can’t press you out of my mind.” Something like that, or “Your celestial face drives a celiac fall; I try to efface your body from my dreams. But your essence I call as my head you exalt; if I were to knock you what would anything mean?” But I never use these words just like I don’t use empyrean, evince, effervescent, efflux...I’d give them to you if I could, if they were mine...how can I make this shadow as pretty as possible? The most eloquent euphony still is not Love.

             I’ve been young for eighteen years. Later, I’ll be old. Dressing and undressing. The people try to get through it, make it easy, go numb...walk around, cower sheepishly like they’ve just pissed their pants, hide themselves, mask themselves, forget themselves...who? Concern themselves with endless tasks, illusory DRAMA, trouble over shadows of trouble, a distilled, processed and packaged form of life...Don’t try, I think, I think you shouldn’t try; we’re all getting there, breathe out...you’re dying too, now don’t try...shower, scratch, writhe naked on the floor, go into a backward somersault and land in new, in always, in self. Piss everywhere. I want to paint the space around me with these shadows. Good and bad shadows...I want people to know me...I Love...the most eloquent euphony still is not Love.

            “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” but what is you worth? You, my favorite word...without light, inspiration, there’s not even shadow...

            Is it over? Am I done? What does it look like? The most eloquent euphony still is not Love.